Technical Abstract:
Brahman beef is generally perceived to have lower tenderness and a greater amount of connective tissue than continental breeds. Tenderness of Brahman beef has been improved by use of hydrodynamic pressure processing (H), blade tenderization (B) and B followed by H (BH). The aim of this study was to examine the effects of H, B and BH on the connective tissue component of tenderness in Brahman top rounds. Frozen top rounds (n=12), selected for toughness (shear force range 6.8 - 9.8 kgf), were thawed before dividing in half and randomly assigning to treatments in a balanced incomplete block design. Each treated sample had a paired control (C). B and BH samples were passed once through a blade tenderizer. Vacuum packaged H and BH samples were subjected to a binary explosive shock wave in a plastic container filled with water. Samples were obtained for shear force, collagen amount and solubility analyses. Data were analyzed for C vs treated effects and among B, H and BH treatments. All treatments significantly improved tenderness by an average of 22.8 percent compared to C (6.7 vs 8.7 kgf). Significant tenderness improvement was noted for B, H and BH (26, 23 and 20 percent) versus C. No differences (p>0.05) in total collagen (µg/g dry weight) were detected. The percent soluble collagen was not different (p>0.05) between treated and control for B (6.9 vs 6.5 percent); however, a significant increase was detected for H and BH (45 and 33 percent improvement) compared to their C. Amount and percent soluble collagen were correlated (coefficients of -0.5 with p<0.0008 and -0.4 at p<0.0006) to shear force. Improvements in tenderization were seen for all treatments of Brahman top rounds. Blade tenderization had no effect on the collagen solubility. Clearly hydrodynamic pressure processing affected connective tissue solubility, but how this relates to tenderness is yet to be determined.